Internet Explorer has failed to gain market share for the third month in a row …

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As browser competition continues to heat up, 2010 looks like the year when the market was repeatedly disrupted. Internet Explorer has not managed to gain share for a third month in a row. Firefox is leveling out while Chrome and Safari continue to grow. Opera? It's hanging on to relevance.

Between July and August, Internet Explorer dropped 0.34 percent, a drop smaller than June's or July's gain. Firefox, meanwhile, went up 0.02 percent, Chrome gained 0.36 percent, Safari was up 0.07, and Opera dipped 0.08 percent.

IE looks stuck around the 60 percent mark for the time being. At least it's still above its lowest point (59.69 percent) with its best chance of market share gains in the short term coming with the IE9 beta, and the back-to-school season.

The importance of being the default browser in the world's most popular operating system continues to help IE. Microsoft browsers are being used by more than 6 out of 10 people and IE8 is being used by more than one in four on the Web (quickly closing in on one in three)—it is now at 27.90 percent (over 30 percent if Compatibility Mode is included). Unfortunately for Web developers everywhere, IE6 continues to be more popular than IE7, though this month it declined more than its successor. IE6's share can be attributed to businesses still using customized intranet applications, and XP's much bigger installed base than Vista's (especially in developing countries).

If we take a look at the last 12 months, the stabilization of IE is really obvious. Firefox, meanwhile, remains far away from what may be the unreachable 25 percent mark, having lost all the share it gained in the last year. Its market share is actually lower than it was a year ago. Chrome's progress is very noticeable in the chart above, though it seems to have found resistance at the 7 percent mark. Safari's gains are at about 1 percentage point, while Opera's are almost insignificant.

As always, things at Ars are very different. There was no place-changing this time: Firefox continues to dominate, Chrome is second, Safari is third, IE is fourth, and Opera brings up the rear. Last month, Firefox gained share, as did Chrome and Opera. The first-party browsers, Safari and IE, both dropped.

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52 Reader Comments

Nagumo Get back to us when Chrome has actual double digit marketshare. Crowing over a sub 10% share, is just ridiculous.

considering MS marketplace dominance due to their monopoly position on non-mac pc's and their raping of netscape; it's pretty noteworthy that they have the competition in the browser wars now and have not trampled them (yet).

I've been using Opera for 6 years. I've tried the others, but I just can't get used to them. Opera has always been my favorite. They innovated a lot of features that most users take for granted, and that all other browsers mimic.

...I'm also addicted to mouse gestures.

You either love it or you hate it. Then again, most people I talk to don't even know it exists, unless they are from Europe.

I just wish people would stop using IE6. Its already had a public funeral March 1, 2010.

If there was a proper sandbox with the ability of clean removal and no trashing up your registry whatever of downloaded applications like they are for example provided by iphone apps we wouldn't need web apps. We could use any cross platform development environment like Java (or whatever) and develop applications in a decent way.

In other words, what we need is the evil, evil Flash which everyone thinks Must Be Destroyed?

(As a side note, after Oracle decided to sue Google over Android, it might not be the best time to float the whole "hey, let's make everything in Java!" meme.)

Yuck. Unless a special case is presented, I wish every site would just use standard HTML and CSS. And the excuses not to seem to be slimming with HTML 5 and CSS3 protocols. I hate using flash and the java web apps I've seen have been worse. Google documents/calendar/etc illustrates the power HTML/CSS/Jscript apps can have.

Off topic: I think it would be cool, however, if Google offered a desktop version of its softwares that populated its data from the cloud. Kind of like how I can use Gmail on the internet or pull it up with my Thunderbird desktop client.

Sites are passé -- everyone is making apps now. My prediction: within 5 years, websites will primarily exist just as the fallback protocol for people whose platform doesn't support the right app. But the apps will have most of the development attention and all of the cool features.

Sites are passé -- everyone is making apps now. My prediction: within 5 years, websites will primarily exist just as the fallback protocol for people whose platform doesn't support the right app. But the apps will have most of the development attention and all of the cool features.

I do not agree. I am actually pretty sure that within 5 years everything will be web based (and so is Google, do not forget ChromeOS). Why would anyone bother making separate apps for Android, iOS, Windows, OS X, Linux and many other platforms if they can just make one "website" that works everywhere? Chrome is already fast enough to do everything average user needs and once IE9 starts gaining market share there really is no more need for local apps.

Sites are passé -- everyone is making apps now. My prediction: within 5 years, websites will primarily exist just as the fallback protocol for people whose platform doesn't support the right app. But the apps will have most of the development attention and all of the cool features.

I do not agree. I am actually pretty sure that within 5 years everything will be web based (and so is Google, do not forget ChromeOS).

And yet Android has apps, and it's also by Google.

hanzoff wrote:

Why would anyone bother making separate apps for Android, iOS, Windows, OS X, Linux and many other platforms if they can just make one "website" that works everywhere?

Then why have so many websites made apps already? Why is all of the VC money going to mobile app developers?

Answer: because you get more usage if your site/app has a shiny icon right in the chrome of your OS than if you have to dig into a bunch of bookmarks or type in a search to find it. Also, because even a sandboxed app can do more than a browser app, especially when it comes to support for OS UI conventions and for interoperating with hardware devices.

The next versions of OS X and Windows are both widely rumored to incorporate phone-style app stores, which means that there will be such a beast for the two largest desktop platforms, all major phone platforms, and likely most major tablet platforms (all of them if Chrome OS backpedals). For that matter, Ubuntu already has an app store, don't they? Or did that never come to fruition?

Just for the record, I think the return to balkanized platform-specific apps is as idiotic as you do. But I don't think that the fact that it's stupid will be enough to stop the trend's momentum if it's even slightly better at drawing eyeballs.

If there was a proper sandbox with the ability of clean removal and no trashing up your registry whatever of downloaded applications like they are for example provided by iphone apps we wouldn't need web apps. We could use any cross platform development environment like Java (or whatever) and develop applications in a decent way.

In other words, what we need is the evil, evil Flash which everyone thinks Must Be Destroyed?

(As a side note, after Oracle decided to sue Google over Android, it might not be the best time to float the whole "hey, let's make everything in Java!" meme.)

Yuck. Unless a special case is presented, I wish every site would just use standard HTML and CSS. And the excuses not to seem to be slimming with HTML 5 and CSS3 protocols. I hate using flash and the java web apps I've seen have been worse. Google documents/calendar/etc illustrates the power HTML/CSS/Jscript apps can have.

Off topic: I think it would be cool, however, if Google offered a desktop version of its softwares that populated its data from the cloud. Kind of like how I can use Gmail on the internet or pull it up with my Thunderbird desktop client.

Sites are passé -- everyone is making apps now. My prediction: within 5 years, websites will primarily exist just as the fallback protocol for people whose platform doesn't support the right app. But the apps will have most of the development attention and all of the cool features.

Define "app". Generically, an app can be HTML/CSS/Javascript based, or (a little more traditionally) have server-side-scripting thrown in (like Google pages). It doesn't necessarily have to be written in Flash or Java. On the other hand, I get the feeling that the Flash/Java/etc scenario is coming to define the concept of an 'app'.

If you subscribe to the generic definition, then I would say your prediction came true long ago insofar as nearly every website could be viewed as an App. Certainly blogs and forums.

If you subscribe to the newer 'it has to use a non-conventional web language' concept, then I would argue that there will (for the foreseeable future) be a place for HTML/CSS/Javascript with some server-side scripting. Consider the interest in blogging--that hasn't really gravitated away from conventional web languages. Additionally, CSS3 and HTML5 conventions seem to be empowering web languages rather than encouraging people to migrate to non-web languages to get their stuff done.

Finally, if anyone else is like me, web applications just behave better in a browser than non-web languages. Non-web languages almost always have a gross look and feel and don't behave like you would expect them to (i.e. the right-click menu in flash is completely useless). In my opinion (and I suspect the opinions of others as well) flash and other non-web apps should be reserved for special situations (such as preventing the theft of images on a photographer's site), otherwise it's always unpleasant from a user's perspective, so why put your users through it? Obviously the contents of this paragraph are subjective, but if the internet becomes flash/java based, I'm going offline permenantly.

Sites are passé -- everyone is making apps now. My prediction: within 5 years, websites will primarily exist just as the fallback protocol for people whose platform doesn't support the right app. But the apps will have most of the development attention and all of the cool features.

If that is the internets fate, than perhaps it's time to begin focusing on the darknet. I.e. Darknet is to the internet what Linux is to windows.

I've been watching this war for a few months now too and I'm seriously encouraged.Microsoft launched a serious FUD campaign on television in June/July that whacked FireFox back into last year. But Hark! Once they stopped dropping millions into propaganda machine the pattern stablized into IE's slide.

Define "app". Generically, an app can be HTML/CSS/Javascript based, or (a little more traditionally) have server-side-scripting thrown in (like Google pages). It doesn't necessarily have to be written in Flash or Java. On the other hand, I get the feeling that the Flash/Java/etc scenario is coming to define the concept of an 'app'. If you subscribe to the generic definition, then I would say your prediction came true long ago insofar as nearly every website could be viewed as an App. Certainly blogs and forums.

My personal minimal definition for an app (as opposed to a "web app") is "can be installed into UI chrome and launched without opening a browser window. This still allows for the possibility of browsers that enable pure HTML/CSS/JS apps to be installed into the launch areas of your phone or computer, and to be launched apps directly, possibly without putting a frame full of browser chrome around them. From what I understand, this variant is more or less the premise of Chrome OS. For that matter, Palm (and Blackberry 6 too, I think) apps are built using web standards.

But I think going to things in your browser is going to be an increasingly less important way of accessing content, and mobile is leading the way.

weberc2 wrote:

If you subscribe to the newer 'it has to use a non-conventional web language' concept, then I would argue that there will (for the foreseeable future) be a place for HTML/CSS/Javascript with some server-side scripting. Consider the interest in blogging--that hasn't really gravitated away from conventional web languages. Additionally, CSS3 and HTML5 conventions seem to be empowering web languages rather than encouraging people to migrate to non-web languages to get their stuff done.

I think there will definitely be a place -- but it's already clear that installing into the OS is the wave of the present in mobile, and I think that will spread back to the desktop. Things you access regularly will be apps. Things you go track down you can either use the web experience or install it, your choice. Things that aren't installed will have much lower audience return and retention rates.

weberc2 wrote:

Finally, if anyone else is like me, web applications just behave better in a browser than non-web languages. Non-web languages almost always have a gross look and feel and don't behave like you would expect them to (i.e. the right-click menu in flash is completely useless). In my opinion (and I suspect the opinions of others as well) flash and other non-web apps should be reserved for special situations (such as preventing the theft of images on a photographer's site), otherwise it's always unpleasant from a user's perspective, so why put your users through it? Obviously the contents of this paragraph are subjective, but if the internet becomes flash/java based, I'm going offline permenantly.

There will still be browser-based access, because that improves discoverability, and because of backward compatibility. But if you want to keep your audience, you build an app.

Interesting that while Firefox, Chrome and Safari get much higher representation in a 'geek' demographic, Opera is basically no more popular among geeks than it is among the general population.

I know. It's pretty customizable with the mouse gestures and keyboard shortcuts and all the built in tools that seem to work OK. Heck I didn't even have a BitTorrent client for a long time because the one built in works fine for basic use. You'd think that'd be up a geek's worm hole.

But no.

I reckon Opera is to global browser markets what diesel engines are to Americans: an unwanted choice based on outdated perceptions.

Y'see, back in the 70's during the Arab oil embargo, gas prices in America shot up and there was this big crisis. It was the first time small efficient cars really took off in the states, and some makers like BMW, Volkswagen and even Volvo, IIRC, offered small normally-aspirated diesels in their small cars. The Rabbit had a diesel that did a 0-60 time measured in passing ice ages, but it got 54 mpg reliably when others got 12 or 15.

So GM's answer was to roll out their own line of diesels. Except, instead of building the engines from scratch or importing them from elsewhere, they just retrofitted their existing setups, because it was the cheap thing to do. All these big slow smelly smoky diesels began showing up in giant block long Oldsmobiles and Chevrolets, and then they immediately broke down because of GM's shoddy retrofitting.

Well, the massive troubles of GM's refitted diesels killed the market desire in the US so much that everyone but Mercedes and VW eventually pulled out of the diesel passenger car market.

Even today, a lot of the general population don't want to even consider a diesel engine, despite the performance gains, the refinement and 30% better mileage/30% lower CO2 emissions. So while Europe enjoys small turbocharged high mileage diesels in all their cars, even luxe saloons like the Audi A8, we don't get that choice. All because of a 30 year old misperception.

Opera is like that. People remember the days of ad banners and the notion of paying to remove the banner, they remember the webpage rendering problems because back then, everything fancier was made for IE only. People remember the general clunkiness and closed-mindedness of it.

Today, Opera has made great strides and continues to come up with occasional "oh wow" moments while refining the performance and interface, but people are too set in their ways to seek out alternatives.

The only reason Chrome is doing so well is because it's shoved in our collective faces anytime we use a Google service. I see the advert on YouTube more than anything else, and that is a LOT of eyes right there. Chrome is my #2 browser for the few sites that don't work right in Opera. But it is by no means a good browser in my eyes because it's so clunky with its minimalist interface and weird keyboard conventions (why can't I select a block of text with shift-arrow combinations? It moves tabs instead. And can't move through text quickly with Ctrl-Shift Tab even though I'm pretty sure that works everywhere else.)

I run the snapshot builds of Opera most of the time and they are, for the most part, more reliable for me than Firefox or Chrome 6 (this latest build being the lone exception, sadly). So I don't understand where people continue to dislike it. It's certainly faster on my older setup than Chrome or Firefox, and doesn't really take up any more memory than Chrome + E-mail program + RSS reader + BitTorrent, so why the hate?

Define "app". Generically, an app can be HTML/CSS/Javascript based, or (a little more traditionally) have server-side-scripting thrown in (like Google pages). It doesn't necessarily have to be written in Flash or Java. On the other hand, I get the feeling that the Flash/Java/etc scenario is coming to define the concept of an 'app'. If you subscribe to the generic definition, then I would say your prediction came true long ago insofar as nearly every website could be viewed as an App. Certainly blogs and forums.

My personal minimal definition for an app (as opposed to a "web app") is "can be installed into UI chrome and launched without opening a browser window. This still allows for the possibility of browsers that enable pure HTML/CSS/JS apps to be installed into the launch areas of your phone or computer, and to be launched apps directly, possibly without putting a frame full of browser chrome around them. From what I understand, this variant is more or less the premise of Chrome OS. For that matter, Palm (and Blackberry 6 too, I think) apps are built using web standards.

But I think going to things in your browser is going to be an increasingly less important way of accessing content, and mobile is leading the way.

weberc2 wrote:

If you subscribe to the newer 'it has to use a non-conventional web language' concept, then I would argue that there will (for the foreseeable future) be a place for HTML/CSS/Javascript with some server-side scripting. Consider the interest in blogging--that hasn't really gravitated away from conventional web languages. Additionally, CSS3 and HTML5 conventions seem to be empowering web languages rather than encouraging people to migrate to non-web languages to get their stuff done.

I think there will definitely be a place -- but it's already clear that installing into the OS is the wave of the present in mobile, and I think that will spread back to the desktop. Things you access regularly will be apps. Things you go track down you can either use the web experience or install it, your choice. Things that aren't installed will have much lower audience return and retention rates.

weberc2 wrote:

Finally, if anyone else is like me, web applications just behave better in a browser than non-web languages. Non-web languages almost always have a gross look and feel and don't behave like you would expect them to (i.e. the right-click menu in flash is completely useless). In my opinion (and I suspect the opinions of others as well) flash and other non-web apps should be reserved for special situations (such as preventing the theft of images on a photographer's site), otherwise it's always unpleasant from a user's perspective, so why put your users through it? Obviously the contents of this paragraph are subjective, but if the internet becomes flash/java based, I'm going offline permenantly.

There will still be browser-based access, because that improves discoverability, and because of backward compatibility. But if you want to keep your audience, you build an app.

Actually, desktop apps as you describe them were (and are) the norm. Web-based apps are the gamble a few companies (i.e. Google) are taking as they see them being the future-wave. For example, all Google Doc files are based around existing application files (primarily from the microsoft office suite).

As far as a shift away from the browser, I think it would be a cool idea if, for example, you could download a facebook application. The application would run the GUI on your computer rather than receiving the HTML/CSS data from the web--the only web data would be the content thus improving speed. And of course any website could do this. The fundamental problem with this is security--having to effectively "download" every site you plan to frequent as an application would give the application more control over your system since the browser isn't there to ensure safety. Another problem would be the sheer quantity of these applications on your computer.

Unless there becomes some reliable gatekeeper for safe applications, I don't foresee a shift away from web anytime soon, although you may be right in that it won't be shifting towards the web either.